


cover me in honeysuckle memories

by queenofthestarrrs



Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: (in a sense), F/F, Identity Issues, Motherhood, Self Confidence Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-15
Updated: 2015-07-15
Packaged: 2018-04-09 10:19:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4344737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/queenofthestarrrs/pseuds/queenofthestarrrs
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And just like she’s been doing for a millennium, Pearl does what Rose Quartz can’t do for herself.  Pearl can be here for her son.</p>
            </blockquote>





	cover me in honeysuckle memories

i.

 

“Greg.”

 

Pearl shutters at the name. Rose has been saying it for a long, long time, and Pearl still shutters, almost involuntarily, every time. She chalks it up as yet another character defect.

 

It’s only been five Earth years, so perhaps it hasn’t been such a long time. Five Earth years are nothing to her. They’re barely a blink of an eye. Yet, somehow, she’s watched Greg grow old. Well older than he was when he dared to climb over the fence. He has sprouted up to the point where the two of them are almost eye level, a fact Pearl distains.Some of his long hair has fallen out, leaving a shiny and sunburnt colored hole right in the center of his head. (Amethyst is consoling in the best way she knows how, which is to say she isn’t very consoling at all. But Greg rewards her with a big smile and a hot dog nonetheless.)

 

“Are you even listening?” Rose is staring off into the horizon where the sun has just begun to dip below the ocean.

 

“Of course I am.” Pearl’s tone is defensive. She shrugs a little bit, watches the thin fabric around her shoulders rustle. Or at least they would have rustled, had it been real fabric rather than just an elaborate refraction of light. “I just need you to repeat what you had just said. You know, for posterity's sake.”

 

“Greg says he loves the way the sun feels on his skin.” Greg loves too much, Pearl thinks sometimes. He loves music and the beach and the sun and his little car wash down by the center of town and donuts and his guitar and Rose and his parents and...The list is seemingly endless. She can name everything she ever dared to love using only one hand.

 

The sun is ducking behind the ocean faster and faster. There is a faint outline of the moon to her left and with the moon comes the stars. Pearl doesn’t look. She has no desire to be struck by homesickness tonight.

 

(Sometimes being here, with Rose, on Earth, doesn’t feel real. She feels as if at any moment she will close her eyes and that they’ll open again to take in the familiar sights of her home. Sometimes, she wishes that would happen.)

 

“What does he say the sun feels like?” She asks quietly. She has never nor will ever feel the light or the wind or the snow on her skin. Her skin isn’t real.

 

“Warm.” Rose chuckles, and her arms instinctively wrap around bulging stomach. Pearl tries not to stare. She does not succeed.

 

“What does warm feel like?”

 

“I don’t know.” Rose chuckles harder and it sounds less like laughter and more like music. Pearl could imagine listening to it forever. She could imagine dancing to it, swaying her body in rhythm with the way Rose’s chest heaves.

 

And suddenly it stops.

 

Rose turns to her, her expression serious. “Do you think he’ll be able to feel the sun?”

 

Pearl cocks an eyebrow. “Do I think who will be able to feel the sun?”

 

Rose smiles softly and wraps her arms tighter around her stomach. Her gem is sparklingly in the remaining light, and it sends pink speckles across the sand.

 

“How do you know that it’ll be a he?” Pearl knits her eyebrows together. “There has never been a gem who is a ‘he.’ Our people have never done that.”

 

“There is a first time for everything I suppose.” Rose shrugs, large ringlets moving with her shoulders.  “Call it a mother’s intuition.”

  
  


ii.

 

Steven hasn’t slept all night.

Pearl has counted every minute and every hours. One, two, three, four five...all the way to sixty. Then she repeats it sixty times. And then it’s an hour. And then she does it again and again and again until she has counted to the number sixty four hundred and eighty times.

 

Garnet and Amethyst have disappeared inside the warp. Their duty to protect the Earth never pauses, not even for sick infants who sob and cough and gum at your fingers for hours on end. They ask her to go with her, tell her she’s an important part of the team and that they need her. She smiles briefly. Even if she doubts it’s true, the compliment makes her happy. But she declines.

 

Garnet and Amethyst owe this to the Earth, their planet. Pearl really only owes something to Rose Quartz. And just like she’s been doing for a millenia, Pearl does what Rose Quartz can’t do for herself.

 

She cannot be here for her son. She cannot hold him in her arms, cannot delight in the way his lips smack together, cannot feel his pain as he cries out. So Pearl declines and settles next to the surf with Steven in her arms. She does it tonight and will do it many nights after this.

 

Pearl doesn’t jump when Greg plops down next to her in the wet sound. In fact, she barely notices.

 

“Hi, Pearl.” He says.

 

“I thought you said you were going to sleep now.” She responds.

 

“I did, but I couldn’t.” He says.

 

“Couldn’t what?” She responds.

 

“Sleep. What about him?” He says.

 

“Steven? What _about_ him?” She responds..

 

“Has he slept?” He says.

 

“Not really.” She responds.  

 

“Where are Garnet and Amethyst? Aren’t they here?” He says.

 

“They had to leave.” She responds.

 

Greg mentions something about being frustrated and tired, something about how they were supposed in this together. Pearl gives him a sharp glance. Greg immediately flushes a deep scarlet and rubs his eyes. He looks worn, ragged. Steven lets out a muffled sob. They both sigh.

 

“If Rose was here, she’d know exactly what to do.” He says, softly this time.

 

“She would.” She responds with tones of melancholy in her voice.

 

This will be the only time she ever lets Greg share in her grief. This will be the only time he dares to.

  
  


iii.

 

Steven is particularly inept at the language of the Homeworld.

 

His mouth stumbles over simple words. He has no patience for grammar, no ear for tone, no desire to sit while there are toys and Amethyst lying around, just waiting for Steven to play with them.  

 

She tries everything that she can. She tries to make it a game. He refutes that her elaborate games have too many rules. She tries to make it a competition. He buckles under the perceived pressure. She enlists the other gems. They are no help.

One day, she reads that human children pick up on a variety of things while they sleep. Something about the way their brains are wired and electrically impulses and Pearl decides she’d much rather stick to fixing machines. But she gives it a shot anyway.

 

Their nighttime routine is the same. She cooks something for his dinner because she loves the way she measures the ratio of cheese to milk and calculates how long the pasta should boil in salted water. Garnet washes him up. Amethyst tucks him in.

 

And when his breathing slows and sleep overtakes him, Pearl settles in.

 

She wants to teach him the words for familiar things, but she can’t seem to find the right ones. There is no word for bed or blanket or mattress or pillow or sheet because gems don’t sleep. There is no word for refrigerator or oven or plate or utensil because gems don’t eat. There is no word for father or mother because gems are made not born.

 

So she settles for stories. She tells him the stories she heard as a young gem, the stories she helped make with Rose Quartz, stories of things that have yet to happen. Sometimes they are happy stories about heroes and honesty and strength. Most of time they are not. Most times they are war stories.

 

(Sometimes she cries fallen gems she did not know. Sometimes she cries for the ones she did. Sometimes she just cries for no reason at.)

 

He stirs occasionally. He mumbles in his sleep. When he does, her breath hitches. Her mind does mental backflips to come up with some kind of plausible excuse to why she is looming over his bed. But he never wakes.

 

She repeats the ritual for months. She is so close to giving up, finally just retreating to the temple, when Steven says Rose’s name in passing one afternoon.

 

His tone is perfect, his accent eloquent. He doesn’t stumble. Pearl allows herself to relish in this victory.

  
  


iv.

 

Garnet looks at Steven, looks at their lives, and says they’re doing the best they can.

 

Pearl thinks her best isn’t good enough.

 

Amethyst looks at Steven, looks at their lives, and says they’ve got it covered.

 

Pearl begs to differ.

 

Steven looks at their lives and says Rose would be proud of them.

  
Pearl indulges herself and believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> wow, i love pearl. a lot.
> 
> as always @shehulkings on tumblr.


End file.
